Keyword research is goshawful boring, would you agree? But, everyone knows that great keywords are, well… key to getting your website the attention it deserves. If your content disappears into the ozone, totally ignored by the search engines, you might want to learn how to do some proper keyword research. It’s a little work – okay, a lot of work – but think of your keyword research as the first step on your trail to search result success.
Here are a few “hacks” to get the most out of your search and find more keywords and their synonyms for your business. And uncover competitors you didn’t know you had. Try them out!
Quotation Marks
“electrician near me” triggers an exact match query, meaning that they will show up in the exact same order in the snippets for each link. The smart electrician will include this phrase somehow in his primary keyword shortlist.
Dash
Serves as a minus sign to exclude certain words from your search. It works best if you have 3 or more terms. But there’s a trick to it – take out the spaces on either side of the word you want to exclude, so the dashes bracket it. Like so:
electrician -plumber- licensed in SC
Buuuuuttt… if you want to compare terms, or search for more than 2 terms at once, put the spaces back in:
electrician – plumber – licensed in SC
Tilde
This will show synonyms for a word, but here again, put the tilde right next to the synonym candidate, with no space in between. Observe:
electrician ~wiring
Site:URL
Search for something within a website address. Put your keyword in quotes and then add the site:URL, like this:
“electricians licensed in SC” site:angieslist.com
Link:URL
This shortcut will show you websites containing your search term that link to the target URL. Here again, put your keyword in quotes first, or you’ll end up with a gazillion pages of results.
“electricians in SC” link:angieslist.com
2 Periods (aka Full Stops)
Adding 2 periods plus a space between a set of limits will yield a range for your keyword. The range can be years, prices or measurements, like this:
electrical code in SC 1920.. 1980
These are just a few of the many possible hacks you can use to streamline your searches. Hope you find them useful and fun!
Here’s a lengthy explanation of more hilarity you can have performing keyword research. You can easily see that it gets pretty convoluted — quick, fast, and in a hurry. If you’d rather leave that to me, just say the word and let’s get busy!